UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Glitch Jazz: Improvisers Negotiating Control In A Digital World

THESIS

submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF FINE ARTS

in Music

with emphasis in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology

by

Daniel Andress Sanchez

Thesis Committee: Professor Kei Akagi, Chair Professor Michael Dessen

Professor Peter Krapp

2013

 

© 2013 Daniel Andress Sanchez

 

ii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract of the Thesis iv

Preface 2

Glitch: A History, Definition, and Scholarship 4

From Electronic to Electroacoustic 12

Capturing/Imitating Glitch 16

Composing for Ensembles and Electronics 20

Glitch + Jazz 28

Bibliography 32

 

iii

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my committee members, Kei Akagi, Michael Dessen, and Peter Krapp, for their guidance, feedback, and perspective on both my capstone project and my thesis paper. I also need to thank those at UC Irvine who provided me with counseling on my research and compositions: Nicole Mitchell, Ko Umezaki, Chris Dobrian, and Cecilia Sun; and also a special thanks to my colleagues in the ICIT program. I must thank my wonderful performers: David Daniel Diaz, Khris Kempis, Colin Devane, David Otis, Javon Harvey, Nathan Lewis, and Michael Duron, for their outstanding commitment to this project. I’d like to thank my friend, Zac Shannon, for his advice in exploring computer systems, circuit bending, and artificial intelligence; and to my brother, David Sanchez, for his constant feedback during the writing process. I also extend my thanks to my family and friends, and of course, to my parents for their never-ending love and support.

 

iv

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Glitch Jazz: Improvisers Negotiating Control In A Digital World

by Daniel Andress Sanchez

Master of Fine Arts in Music

University of California, Irvine 2013 Professor Kei Akagi, Chair

In 1985, sound artist Yasunao Toné began manipulating CDs by scratching their surfaces or

altering their form of playback to produce unpredictable glitched sounds. Since then, artists

including Markus Popp (b. 1968), Ryoji Ikeda (b. 1966), and Carsten Nicolai (b. 1965), have further

developed newer and disparate strategies to create music from glitches and related sounds. Although

nearly thirty years have passed since Toné’s first experiments, and what some may deem the birth of

the “glitch music” genre, little has been done to broaden the scope of this genre to include

electroacoustic experimentation. Additionally, it would seem that today there are zero known jazz

artists who are exploring ways of integrating glitch electronics into their compositions, making it

difficult to find records or scholarship that explore the potential for combining glitch music with

jazz.

A survey examining the noise content of popular tracks by today’s leading glitch artists

reveals tendencies of those artists to compose using similar electronic sounds (skipping, buzzing,

clipping, hissing, etc.) that share certain characteristics, which make them ideal for pairing with

acoustic instruments. After reviewing the literature and establishing a definition of glitch, this

document identifies a body of glitch sound materials, and the qualities of those sounds that make

them complimentary to acoustic instrumental music. This author also searches for artists from the

jazz tradition who have explored the sounds of glitch within their compositions. Finally, this paper

examines music composed by the author that initiates a precedent for a marriage of glitch and jazz.

 

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Daniel Andress Sanchez

Glitch Jazz: Improvisers Negotiating Control In A Digital World

Committee Members: Kei Akagi, Michael Dessen, and Peter Krapp

“Medical practice is to 'decode the non-silence of the organs'. A medical doctor is not dealing with the patient’s narration but with the primordial noise of the body: 'He is dealing with the noise. Through this noise, he must hear the elements of a message'.”1

                                                                                                               1 Foucault, “Message ou Bruit?” 6285-86, as discussed in Krapp, Noise Channels, xii.

 

     2

PREFACE

If I think back to the moment when I was introduced to the idea of glitch, I recall no one

ever mentioning the word ‘glitch.’ Rather, I saw a YouTube video of Ryoji Ikeda’s installation

entitled The Transfinite2 at Park Avenue Armory in New York City, which involved setting up an

enormous screen in the center of a warehouse and projecting black-and-white rectilinear images

onto those screens. The accompanying music (or noise) was comprised of clipping, high-pitched

bleeps, and static. This only begins to describe the work. I remember my reaction to that video,

thinking to myself, “Hmm…Glitch!” Nobody said anything to me about glitch; it was just a personal

revelation. I was vaguely familiar with what the term “glitch” meant from playing video games,

computer games, watching clips online, and even from certain popular movies. The rectilinear back-

and-white lines, the static, and the buggy computer sounds that I experienced watching The

Transfinite reminded me of moments when my PlayStation would crash, or my computer would

freeze, forcing me to restart the game consul or computer to hopefully get rid of the problem. I even

recalled watching The Matrix–the scene where Trinity explains to Neo that what he thought was

Déjà vu was actually a glitch in the system, caused because the agents changed part of the

environment through the programming. Because I had a sense of what glitch meant, I proceeded to

assume that Ikeda, and similar artists, considered themselves to be ‘glitch artists,’ or part of the

‘glitch music’ genre. It seemed to me that the idea of glitch music required little explanation–certain

sounds and images have become associated with the idea of error and malfunction (an association I

made immediately after viewing The Transfinite), and the glitch artists of the world were on a mission

to elevate those misunderstood and hastily-labeled “undesirable” sounds to the realm of art music.

At least, that was my initial thought. It was as if watching the visual component and listening to the

audio of Ikeda’s multidisciplinary work made the entire aesthetic philosophy of glitch apparent to

me in a moment. His work was minimal, yet elegant and striking, and I felt as if I was listening to the

language of a digital machine.

For years I was searching for ways to focus my interests in electronic and computer music

towards a more manageable body of work. The trouble for me was that there were so many different

possibilities with modern technology that the repertoire of electronic music, in my mind, became a

                                                                                                               2 The Transfinite. Perf. Ryoji Ikeda. YouTube. 16 Jan. 2012. Web. 26 May 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omDK2Cm2mwo>.

 

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towering colossus of vastly dissimilar styles, related only through a common means of production:

the computer. As a composer interested in developing skills in writing electronic music, I found

myself somewhat lost in the countless possibilities, struggling to identify the appropriate categories

of materials, which could best compliment my own acoustic works. I found myself listening to (and

imitating) music by Aphex Twin, Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Ben Frost, Beat Music, The Robert

Glasper Experiment, Shafiq Husayn, Flying Lotus, Skrillex, Deadmau5, edIT, and Stockhausen. My

earlier electronic compositions demonstrated an attempt to emulate these dissimilar artists by

making use of layers upon layers of keyboards, synthesizers, artificial drum samples, wobble bass,

pads, vocoders, analog lead synths, bell sounds, heavily distorted guitars, MIDI strings, and other

noise effects from programs such as Reason and Logic Pro. I admired the ways these artists wielded

control over their electronic sounds, some even learning to improvise with the electronics at their

concerts. At some point, partially because I wanted to experience that feeling of having total control

over every parameter of my music, I even developed a habit of writing acoustic-sounding music

through the computer, exclusively using a live-instrument sample-library and sequencing program.

Some of my first electronic compositions removed the element of performance almost

entirely from my practice. To perform these electronic pieces required only that I push the playback

button. Had I wanted to perform these pieces live and accurately, duplicating every electronic track

with a real musician, I would most likely have required a small army of keyboards, synthesizers,

drum pads, and more. Alternatively, there was always the option of exploring live performance with

some instruments, leaving the rest of the materials to be played from a sequencer. Still, I felt it was

undesirable to invite improvisers to perform with a sequenced track, which had a fixed total duration

of the piece, had a fixed harmonic structure (established by the keyboards, synths, bass guitars, etc.),

and had a fixed rhythmic structure (established by the artificial beats, drum loops, and some bass

samples). My style of writing for acoustic ensembles often left room for improvisers to stretch the

form, re-harmonize chords, pause (breathe), complicate rhythmic patterns with inventive sub-

divisions, and essentially make spontaneous decisions that could alter some of the finer details of a

piece of music. Ultimately, I realized that the music I was exploring through electronic composition

was rhythmically and harmonically inflexible, and it made a poor compliment for my acoustic works.

Working from so many different models led me to create a body of electronic music that were

seemingly unrelated and disconnected from my acoustic works. As a composer ending his studies in

the academic world and coming primarily out of the jazz tradition, I felt that my acoustic works had

almost no connection to the materials I was exploring electronically, and that any future prospect for

 

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a marriage between electronic and acoustic music in my own compositions was unlikely to create any

lasting significance. Then, in 2012, I encountered glitch music.

Now, as a composer exploring the potential for combining glitch music with acoustic music

(jazz, in my case), I have found a focal point for my explorations in electronic materials. Rather than

working with the entire cascade of electronic materials that are present in the music of the

aforementioned artists, composers writing glitch are able to limit their sonic palette to materials

which share certain qualities (a complete definition of glitch, written by the author, is provided in the

following section of this paper). Some of the first glitch tracks I listened to, which included music by

Ryoji Ikeda and COH3, were mostly comprised of materials which had very little to do with

conventional harmony or pitch; it was mostly electronic noise, or glitch noise (buzzing, clipping,

static, beeps, etc.). There is rhythmic material in those tracks, but they are not structured in a

simplistic 4/4 time signature, as is the case for most popular electronic music tracks. The rhythms in

these tracks are meant just to keep a pulse, not necessarily to establish regular measure lengths. I

discovered that these glitch sounds could be made to be both harmonically and rhythmically flexible,

making these electronic materials ideal for pairing with acoustic instruments and improvisers. This

discovery pushed me to research and define glitch.

GLITCH: A HISTORY, DEFINITION, AND SCHOLARSHIP

“Our digital media culture is predicated on communication efficiencies to an extent that can obscure or veil the sources of noise, as faults, glitches, and bugs are too often relegated to the realm of the accidental. Yet glitch electronica puts

precisely this raw material to creative use.”4

In his essay, “Glitch– The Beauty of Malfunction,” Torben Sangild defines the glitch as a

term “commonly used to describe errors in computer software…or hardware, computers crashing,

or, specifically, the sound of a CD or sound file skipping and stuttering. A glitch, also when not

connected to audio technology, is often accompanied by some noise, reminding us that something is

wrong.”5 In the same article, he describes glitch as “a minor malfunction or spurious signal…the

machinery is still running but the performance is poor–either annoying, problematic, or downright

useless,”6 saying “something glitchy is…out of control.”7 Sangild observes that the first recorded

                                                                                                               3 Ikeda, “data.matrix.” COH. “In Spaces Between.” 4 Krapp, Noise Channels, 53. 5 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258-9.    6 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258.

 

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usage of the term was done by the astronaut John Glenn, referring to electrical power problems on

the early manned spacecraft.8 Glitch became adopted by the masses to refer to electrical mishaps,

malfunctions, sudden unexpected changes, power surges, disruptions, loss of service, and noise due

to interference.9 My computer tells me a glitch is a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or

irregularity of equipment. It is the failure of a system. Or, more specifically, it is the failure of a

system to meet the demands of its user. A glitch is a system's way of indicating to the user that it is

nervous, and is having an accident. Under pressure, a system can glitch, and demonstrate abilities or

create materials that its creators did not anticipate. It can represent struggle, distortion, imperfection,

transformation, pressure, a fault or flaw, unpredictability, chaos. Sangild states that glitch music

incorporates these and related sounds, through a variety of techniques, in which “the results are

sampled and composed into a specific musical context depending on the aesthetic preferences of the

composer.”10

Caleb Kelly, author of Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, offers his explanation, “It will

be argued that the practice identified as ‘glitch’, which became popular in the late twentieth century,

was a key marker in the development of digital arts practices. It represented a familiarity with

computer-based technologies, as well as a new direction for their use…In the mid-to-late 1990s

experimental music witnessed an outpouring of interest as the tools of music production were

transformed and rapidly expanded with the mass take-up of digital technology. The general

population gained access to more affordable computer and home studio equipment, and a surge of

experimentation took place…Glitch, as the genre became known, developed as a central initial part

of this outburst of creation.”11 Kelly outlines how glitch developed during the 90s as a result of

musical experimentation of new and affordable software by some of the general population. He also

connects the glitch scene to the “error-driven” scene, and asks, “how many times can you force

something into failure before it becomes creatively uninteresting?”12

Arguably one of the most important articles that has been written on glitch comes from Kim

Cascone, “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music”

(2000). Cascone’s article has been cited by several others scholars who have written about glitch,

including Philip Sherburne, Torben Sangild, Caleb Kelly, Eliot Bates, Greg Hainge, Rob Young,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     7 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258.  8 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258. 9 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258. 10 Sangild, “Glitch”, 259. 11 Kelly, Cracked Media, 7. 12 Kelley, Cracked Media, 10-12.

 

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Janne Vanhanen, and Adam Collis, and it seems that certain ideas from that article have been

perpetuated throughout much of the post-Cascone scholarship, namely the notion that glitch

adheres to an “aesthetic of failure.” Cascone contends, “it is from the ‘failure’ of digital technologies

that this new work has emerged: glitches, bugs, application errors, system crashes, clipping, aliasing,

distortion, quantization noise, and even the noise floor of computer sound cards are the raw

materials composers seek to incorporate into their music.”13 He goes on to say, “new techniques are

often discovered by accident or by the failure of an intended technique or experiment.” He explains

that there are many types of digital audio failure, which sometimes result in horrible noise.14 Cascone

also begins the critique of glitch music, looking to the German band Oval (regarded today as one of

the pioneers of this music), suggesting that “they were using an aspect of ‘failure’ in their work.”15

This rhetoric is all too familiar in critique of glitch music. In 2001, Philip Sherburne wrote in the

liner notes of the CD compilation Clicks and cuts 2, “To create click-music [that is to say glitch music]

is to harness failure, whether the crackling of the patch cord or the system-crash in mid-sample.”16

Greg Hainge summarizes in his article, “Of Glitch and Men,” the discourses of some of the

aforementioned scholars, “For both Sangild and Bates, the promise, the beauty, or the importance

of glitch lies in its almost redemptive capacity to deploy positively the failures and the short-comings

of the system in which it is born.”17 Glitch music, just like the concept of glitch itself, has become

invariably associated with error and malfunction.18

There seems to be a disconnect between what glitch means conceptually, and what is actually

practiced by glitch artists. Put simply as a concept, a glitch is an accident. Therefore, fundamentally,

it is not possible for artists to represent glitch in its truest sense–that of an accident. If an artist is

presenting glitch, then how could it possibly be an accident? This is true for glitch artists in both the

visual and audio realms. According to Cascone and Sherburne, glitch is supposed to adhere to an

aesthetic of failure, or harness failure.19 It is the collapse of a system due to error. But few glitch

artists are able to preserve the error itself. Instead, they learn to imitate error. Composers and sound

artists work with systems, practicing ways of creating erroneous sounds (which, because of intention,                                                                                                                13 Cascone, “Aesthetics of Failure,” 13. 14 Cascone, “Aesthetics of Failure,” 13. 15 Cascone, “Aesthetics of Failure,” 13. 16 Hainge, “Of Glitch and Men,” 31 17 Hainge, “Of Glitch and Men,” 32 18 Notions of error and failure are not new to music. Experimental music in the 60s has explored this topic with some depth. Even before Cage, Luigi Russolo experimented with noise and sounds that were considered undesirable. See Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises, and Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music. 19 Hainge, “Of Glitch and Men,” 31; Cascone, The Aesthetics of Failure, 12.

 

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are not truly accidental). These artists have developed and designed methods of capturing what

people hear as the sounds of mistake, in order to appropriate that notion and open a discussion that

perhaps questions existing ideas surrounding error and noise.

“For even though both Sangild and Bates are absolutely correct in their detailing of the processes used to prepare or (in Yasunao Tone’s case) ‘wound’ the CDs these artists use for source material, in both of these analyses, the material ontology of glitch is frozen at this point. So although they seem to have described the creation of a material artifact that is imbued with the power to create music that will necessarily be generative and although they acknowledge that this music thus problematizes the high-fidelity ideal by exploiting bugs, glitches, and failures that will cause a system to react in unpredictable ways, by curtailing their ontological material analysis at the stage of disc preparation, they both imbue the disc itself with an agency that it can never have and, furthermore, bypass the process that actually creates the sound that is termed glitch and that is dependent primarily on the hardware of the system’s decoder that reads the data and the corrupted data on the disc: the CD player itself…it is perhaps not a serious error, then, to state that in a glitch piece we hear the sound of a CD skipping.”20

Even Sangild claims, “It may be discussed whether ‘glitch’ is an appropriate genre term, as it

accentuates certain technical aspects over purely musical ones and, therefore, is in danger of over-

emphasizing the conceptual perspective.”21 Conceptually and aesthetically, glitch is the

representation of error as art (“worship the accident”). But in practice, glitch is the rehearsed

imitation of error.

One of the reasons scholars struggle with assigning a definition to glitch music is because the

conceptual ideas surrounding what glitch music claims to be made of do not align with realistic

modes of practice. If we go along with Cascone and Sangild, deciding that a glitch could be, for

example, a computer error, then it would follow that glitch music is music comprised of the sounds

of computer errors. However, this notion is not often true. There are electronica artists like Glitch

Mob (a trio consisting of Justin Boreta (aka Boreta), Edward Ma (aka edIT), and Josh Mayer (aka

Ooah)) who identify themselves not only as electronica artists, but also as glitch artists. Yet their

music is not created only from what sounds like error (although that plays a significant role). Their

music has electric guitars, synthesizers, and artificial drum samples, as well as a plethora of other

audio samples that are in and of themselves not related to error or malfunction.

Rather than establish a definition based on the practice of harvesting the sounds of

computer error and related sounds (which is problematic enough), I propose a definition that is

based on the content of glitch music, as the genre is currently recognized. That is, the following

definition was formulated after compiling a list from multiple sources of the sound materials that

have been used in many glitch recordings: Glitch music is a genre of electronic or electroacoustic

                                                                                                               20 Hainge, “Of Glitch and Men,” 32-33. 21 Sangild, “Glitch”, 258.

 

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music in which the primary sound materials used may include but are not limited to: computer

glitches, bugs, application errors, system crashes, clipping, ticking, aliasing, hissing, CD skipping,

buzzing, distortion, noise floor of computer sound cards, fax tones, fax connections screeches,

telephone tones, modem tones, sine wave tones, stereo test records, clicks of electromagnetic

interference, bad speaker connection hums, ground loops, dither noise, quantization noise, vinyl

noise, white noise, analog filter crackles, stutters, radio static, raw data, bleeps, drones, scratches.22

Some may be surprised to learn that glitch music, a genre scholars have stitched to notions

of error and failure, has also been historically connected to the electronic dance music (EDM) scene.

Cascone asserts that the glitch genre arrived on the back of the electronica movement, “a largely

dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum’n’bass, ambient).”23 DJs in the

early 1990s were experimenting with electronic materials, in search of new musical frontiers ripe for

exploration, when a handful of DJs and composers of electronica finally went back to the history of

electronic music and rediscovered the works of icons such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007),

John Cage (1912-92), Morton Subotnick (1933), and Edgard Varèse (1883-1965). Cascone contends

that it was the influence of these icons and their work which focused on technique, manipulation,

and the quality of the sounds themselves that helped spawn what later became the glitch movement.

Some of the first records of glitch music were peripherally associated with EDM labels, and yet “in

spite of this odd pairing of fashion and art music, the composers of glitch often draw their

inspiration from the masters of 20th century music who they feel best describe its lineage.”24

Interestingly enough, the genre of glitch music occupies an uneasy territory between academia and

mainstream dance music.

Torben Sangild’s essay on glitch also examines a prehistory, and explores styles and

subgenres. Sangild divides glitch music into three subgenres:25 “conceptual glitch” contains the work

of sound artists who explore glitch as a conceptual phenomenon, usually as part of installations;

“oceanic glitch” combines the sounds of glitch with other elements borrowed from electronica and

rock music, creating complex textures of diverse sonic material; and “minimal click” contains the

work of sound artists who strip away everything until they are only left with “dry, repetitive

movements of the tiniest, sometimes inaudible, clicks of computer and sound technology, thereby

                                                                                                               22 Krapp, Noise Channels, 55; Cascone, The Aesthetics of Failure, 13; Sangild, “Glitch”, 257, 265. 23 Cascone, “The Aesthetics of Failure”, 15. 24 Cascone, “The Aesthetics of Failure”, 15.  25 Sangild, “Glitch”, 260-66.    

 

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exposing these sounds musically, often without adding melodic material.”26 These descriptions of

sub-genres are helpful in recognizing the distinctions between some of the worlds leading glitch

artists, reminding us that glitch artists have subtle yet powerful differences in their production,

performance, and practice.

1985 may be the year of the first glitch recording, continues Sangild, as he looks to Yasunao

Toné, whom he identifies as the pioneer, and a component of the “conceptual glitch” subgenre

(Nick Collins also identifies Toné as the starting point in the history of glitch27). In his pieces Techno-

Eden and Music for 2 CDs, Toné “prepared music CDs by slicing them with razor blades or attaching

scotch tape filled with pinholes. The result was unpredictable chunks of sound as the CDs glitched

and skipped–fragments of the original music (classical works by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky)

combined with noises from the CD players, trying in vain to read the digital information on the

damaged discs.”28 Toné was experimenting with the idea of composing sounds through a process of

damaging a system (i.e. wounding the compact discs). This random, unmediated glitch music

demonstrates how composers of this subgenre divorce themselves from having control over the

outcome and form of this music.

For composers who looked to have more direct control over the clicks, squeaks, and

fragments, Sangild offers the term “oceanic glitch” to encompass artists who arrange glitch sounds

as musical textures in combination with other musical practices. The German band Oval is

considered by many to be the most important name in glitch, and Sangild classifies them as

belonging to the subgenre of oceanic glitch. The band released their debut album, Wohnton in 1993

as a trio, with tracks being assembled from glitch loops and the sounds of CD skipping combined

with melody and catchy pop lyrics, regular rhythmic patterns, and a harmonic structure. But since

1996 the name Oval has been an alias for Markus Popp alone, collaborating with different

individuals from project to project.29 In 1994, Oval released the album Systemich, which was

constructed from glitch loops with clicks accentuating the beat, and with rumbling, distorted tones

above. By combining the sounds of glitch with voice, instruments, rhythmic patterns and harmonic

structures, Oval took the idea of glitch music further than Yasunao Toné, setting the agenda for

glitch. “Working on the borderline between noise and tone, Oval uses his skilled ear for harmony to

                                                                                                               26 Sangild, “Glitch”, 260-61. 27 Collins, “Electronica,” 343. 28 Sangild, “Glitch,” 261. 29 Sangild, “Glitch,” 262.

 

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transform the annoying into beauty.”30 Caleb Kelly writes in his book Cracked Media: The Sound of

Malfunction, “Oval’s audio represents the planned use of glitches. No longer is the glitch an

unexpected or even chance occurrence, as it is sampled and sequenced.”31 This marks a significant

leap forward in the development of glitch music.

Finally, Sangild identifies a third subgenre of glitch in his essay: “minimal click.” Japan’s

leading electronic composer, Ryoji Ikeda, is arguably the best example of this style. His music

sometimes explores a single sound for ten or twenty minutes, while slowly transforming its timbre

using digital processing (+/-, 0°C). His glitch sounds come from sine tones, stereo test records,

radio static noise, clicks and ticks and so on. Sangild likens Ikeda to a scientist who “explores the

micro-semantics of isolated sounds, carefully and gradually combining them to create a minimal

gesture.”32 This work differs from that of Toné in that the results are not random, although the

sounds themselves may be very similar. At the close of his subchapter, Sangild concludes, “Minimal

click provides the opportunity to relate more consciously to the sounds we are involuntarily exposed

to in our techno-environments, and to become aware of the stress they inflict upon us as well as the

potential beauty they possess.”33

It would seem that today, composers generally have a great level of control regarding how

much interference, distortion, and noise they want in their recordings. Eliot Bates, author of

“Glitches, Bugs, and Hisses: The Degeneration of Musical Recordings and the Contemporary

Musical Work” comments on this as he writes about the transformation of glitch as a phenomena

into a genre of music, exploring how despite the music industry’s efforts to eliminate error and noise

from recordings over the decades, this genre has emerged built from the non-intentional sounds of

our systems. He explains, “Glitch is that which betrays the fidelity of the musical work.”34 Bates

outlines fidelity in recording systems, the so-called ‘deterioration’ of ‘the musical work,’ playback

idiosyncrasies, and finally the idea of the work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction. Of

particular interest, Bates investigates the work of Markus Popp, mentioned before as the man

behind the name Oval, illuminating a relationship between Popp and Cage. “Oval’s work references

the electronic music palimpsest, drawing in part on Satie, Antheil, and Cage’s experiments in

transforming everyday sounds into music, but most specifically in encouraging listeners to hear

                                                                                                               30 Sangild, “Glitch,” 263. 31 Kelly, Cracked Media, 265. 32 Sangild, “Glitch,” 265.  33 Sangild, “Glitch,” 266. 34 Bates, “Glitches, Bugs, and Hisses,” 277.

 

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technological function and malfunction as music.”35 There has been a trend with recording

technology and its use by musical artists, engineers, producers, and computer musicians throughout

history to explore and develop better technologies, which attempt to eradicate noise and interference

altogether. The goal, it would seem, has been all along to purge the system of faults so that we can

experience the pure audio content of our choice.36 “The very condition of possibility of sound

reproduction and amplification is also a constant source of contamination, and the history of audio

recording and reproduction technology can seem to align along a progressive pursuit of transparency

into the inaudible.”37 Despite this trend to improve technology, some artists have chosen to preserve

glitches and focus their efforts on elevating these materials from the realm of noise to that of music.

These artists are taking materials that would otherwise be discarded as accidents and are finding

innovative ways to represent them as meaningful art forms. We live in an age where our technology

permits us to filter our recordings with great precision, albeit not entirely as digital artifacts and

glitches still find their ways into our systems. The glitch highlights our shortcomings, and works as a

critique of our era–the pursuit of digital perfection.

I believe one of the most important identifying factors within glitch music involves its

process–that of turning sounds related to technological accidents and mistakes into usable materials,

and presenting those materials as the focal point of the work. As glitch has come to suggest error,

system failure, distortion, etc., artists and composers intentionally incorporate these materials into

their works for aesthetic reasons. For some, glitch represents struggle in the digital age. Others are

drawn to the chaos and unpredictability implied and experienced through glitch. Artists are taking

materials that have been relegated as accidents or mistakes by a system and finding innovative ways

to reorganize those materials into new forms of usability.38 These composers have carefully arranged

their materials into intricate musical forms, perhaps ironically leaving little or no room for error. The

glitch has been captured, studied, transformed, polished, and re-presented as something new.

                                                                                                               35 Bates, “Glitches, Bugs, and Hisses,” 287. 36 Krapp, Noise Channels, 56. 37 Krapp, Noise Channels, 56. 38 Menkman, Rosa. "Glitch Studies Manifesto." Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images beyond YouTube. By Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers. Miles. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011. 336-47. Print. 343.  

 

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FROM ELECTRONIC TO ELECTROACOUSTIC

Although glitch is usually described as a form of purely electronic music, I am curious about

the prospect of experiencing glitch music combined with acoustic instrumental music. Having

studied the history of glitch music and its dissemination, I recognize that the highest profile glitch

artists predominantly use exclusively electronic materials. Indeed, the very definition of glitch music

specifically requires the use of certain electronic sound materials, but the genre of glitch music

should not be permanently isolated from the potential of acoustic hybrid forms. It is time for more

experimentation between glitch and acoustic music, and a move towards electroacoustic glitch

music. Thankfully, there are artists today who are exploring the potential of combining glitch with

acoustic instruments–some of these artists (for example) focusing primarily on pairing glitch noise

with the sounds of the acoustic piano. Interestingly enough, this model of blending the sounds of

the piano with noise from elsewhere has been with us for over half a century; John Cage set the

precedent in the late forties with his pieces for prepared piano.

During 1946-48, John Cage wrote Sonatas and Interludes, a series of pieces for the prepared

piano, introducing new noisy sounds to the realm of piano music through experimentation. Cage

effectively transformed the piano from being merely a percussion instrument with fixed pitches into

something which was both a musical instrument as well as a control device for triggering foreign

sounds that had not previously been identified as being part of the traditional language of the piano,

thereby allowing performers of his piano works to access (from the keyboard) the extended range

and sonic capabilities of this mutated instrument. “[Cage] adjusted the timbres of the piano by

inserting foreign objects between the strings: the printed music includes a ‘table of preparations’ that

gives instructions for the placing of screws, nuts, bolts and pieces of plastic and rubber to alter the

sounds of forty-five notes, so that the piano comes to make largely unpitched noises like those of

drums, gongs, and rattles.”39 The detailed manner in which Cage wrote out instructions in his table

of preparations from Sonatas and Interludes indicates that he was carefully mapping new noisy sounds

to be controlled from the keyboard. This method of exploring noise, as well as systems to control

that noise, seems especially appropriate for composers of both electronic and acoustic music who,

during the process of composition, improvise with materials in search of the sounds they desire.

“Preparation of the piano offered the composer the opportunity to explore and transform his sound

                                                                                                               39 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 22.

 

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material in a very direct manner, by inviting an empirical mode of working similar to that being

made possible by the electronic medium.”40 Cage demonstrated how the piano could effectively be

transformed into an instrument with greater capabilities (having an extended range of new timbral

sounds). He showed us that the sounds of the piano, and noise from elsewhere, could both be

triggered from the keyboard. These lessons have influenced a new lineage of composers, and have

played an important role in the development of electro-acoustic glitch music.

Some of the most interesting, compelling, and beautiful glitch music I’ve heard in recent

years comes from artists whose ideas may have evolved from one of the examples of Cage–marrying

noise to the piano. In 2002, German audio and visual artist Carsten Nicolai released his first

collaborative recording with pianist/composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vrioon.41 Under the alias Alva

Noto, Nicolai is internationally renowned as a leading electronic composer, and he is most often

categorized alongside Ryoji Ikeda within the glitch genre (the two have even collaborated together,

releasing records on the label Raster-Noton). Nicolai organizes his own electronic materials into

mathematically sound relationships:

Alva Noto’s work...is organized around the tension between polyrhythmic glitch textures and a

singular focus on the timbre of noise…In his music, he relies on mathematical processes to govern

rhythm, and he uses modems, telephones, and fax tones to compose atonal, syncopated soundscapes;

he ‘recognizes and embraces the fact that it is impossible to maintain perfect integrity in the

communication of any information and instead focuses attention, not on the information transmitted,

but on the enigmatic character of the system of transmission itself. The predominant sound materials

in his music are noises of imperfect systems; clicks of electromagnetic interference, ground loops,

dither noise, aliasing and vinyl noise and so on.’42

Nicolai and Sakamoto’s first album together is one that deserves scholarly attention, as it is

one of the first records to take the elements of the glitch style and to combine them in a

complementary fashion with the sounds of the acoustic piano in strikingly beautiful ways. The

ambience provided by Sakamoto’s sweeping piano chords creates a stark contrast to Nicolai’s

rhythmic yet minimal glitch sounds, combined with the effects of granular synthesis on the piano. It

seems to me that this pairing parallels the work of Cage’s prepared piano, insomuch as the resultant

music explores the marriage of the piano and noise. This landmark record could mark the beginning

                                                                                                               40 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 22. 41 Doswald, Carsten Nicolai, 151. 42 Collis, “Sounds of the System,” 31-39, as discussed in Krapp, Noise Channels, 55.

 

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of an electro-acoustic lineage of glitch music, inviting experimentation from composers, performers,

and improvisers of acoustic instruments into the world of glitch noise. Nicolai and Sakamoto have

continued to work together writing music that combines the sounds of glitch with those of the

acoustic piano, releasing Insen in 2005, and Summvs in 2011.

Not only have Nicolai and Sakamoto pioneered a musical combination of glitch and the

acoustic piano, they also took the next step in the musical evolution of glitch from being purely

electronic to becoming electroacoustic by composing a work for glitch and large chamber ensemble.

In 2008, the duo came together and released UTP_ [sic], an album of ten tracks with Nicolai

providing electronics (audio and visual), Sakamoto on piano, and Ensemble Modern providing

orchestral accompaniment. This release marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of glitch music, as

it illuminates the success of pairing orchestral instruments, piano, and glitch. Furthermore, this

electroacoustic combination emulates the works of Stockhausen and Cage, cited earlier by Cascone

as being important influences for some of the earliest and most significant figures in the history of

glitch. “The result of the collaboration like the former projects of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto

- Vrioon (2002, r-n∗ 50), Insen (2005, r-n 65) and Revep (2005, r-n 72) - is a synergetic mixture of

electronic and natural sounds, that is expanded by the potential of the classical instruments of

ensemble modern. UTP_, the title of the new composition is deduced from the term utopia and

hence describes an approach that leaves space for further extensive associations.”43[sic]

Following Nicolai’s examples with Sakamoto, my piece Zero Haven (2013) was composed for

solo piano and glitch electronics, intended to illustrate what I believe to be the complementary

pairing of a conservative classical instrument with the sound of digital malfunction. To achieve this,

I used Max/MSP to assign triggers on a disklavier (or keyboard) using MIDI signals. When struck,

these triggers would playback short millisecond samples of glitch noise stored in my Max patch. The

assignment of these triggers was saved to different presets within the Max patch, and each preset has

a new library of glitch sounds stored for use. After completing a digital score, a MIDI score was

created and uploaded into the Max patch, thereby allowing the program to follow the pianist during

performances. At key moments during the piece, a trigger causes the program to change the

mapping of the keyboard to follow a new preset. In this way, multiple libraries of sound can be

stored and recalled throughout a single piece, allowing different glitch samples to be used as the

piece develops. The result was music written for piano where certain notes on the keyboard caused

                                                                                                               ∗  Raster-Noton  43 Noto, “Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto. UTP_.”

 

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glitch noise to be heard. This, too, is not very different aesthetically from what John Cage himself

was exploring during the late 1940s. I am continuing the tradition of exploring and transforming

sound using a system of very direct control (the keyboard with Max/MSP mapping triggers), not for

the sake of novelty, but for the sake of convenience (rather than playing piano and laptop

simultaneously, I have brought the laptop controls into the keyboard). One difference between my

work and Cage’s, however, was that where Cage may have only used one prepared piano for a single

piano piece, my composition for disklavier uses what could be deemed the equivalent of a separate

prepared piano for every different preset assigned in Max/MSP, with the computer essentially

reworking the innards of the ‘prepared piano’ at set points throughout the work. Zero Haven explored

a blending of noise and the timbre of the piano, whilst navigating a narrative that explored space,

form, and improvisation.

Learning from the precedent set by Nicolai’s UTP_ [sic] project (glitch and chamber

ensemble), and from the success of that sonic combination, my own works have moved away from a

purely electronic medium, and now explore electroacoustic pairings. During my thesis capstone

performance in 2013, I presented a body of works that explored different electroacoustic

instrumentations (primarily centered around the pairing of piano and glitch). Included in the

program was music for 1) solo piano and glitch 2) piano, upright bass, drums, and glitch 3) piano,

contrabass, cello, violin, and glitch. It was my goal to explore a means of integrating the control of

glitch electronics into the piano itself (by using either a keyboard or disklavier, or other piano that

uses MIDI signals). This provides the pianist (and in my case, the composer as well) with very direct

physical control over the glitch electronics via the keyboard, thereby enabling the performer to focus

on the instrument alone, without resorting to handling a multiplicity of devices for control over the

electronics. It was the example set by Cage’s prepared piano that provided me with a model: noise

does not need to be triggered elsewhere (i.e. a laptop or control pad)–the pianist can trigger noise

from the instrument, or control glitch from the disklavier. Unlike Nicolai’s work with UTP_, which

was performed with Nicolai himself behind laptops and other control devices, alongside the

Ensemble Modern and Sakamoto, I’m currently much more curious about integrating those control

devices into my instrument.

 

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CAPTURING/IMITATING GLITCH

“It is failure that guides evolution; perfection offers no incentive for improvement.”44

Glitch artists use a variety of techniques to create glitch noise. Among the most useful tools

and processes I have adopted for making interesting electronic sounds are circuit bending, data

conversion, granular synthesis, and using the computer programming language Max/MSP for both

audio synthesis and for designing integrated triggering systems. These techniques allow composers

to either capture the sounds of glitch, or reproduce and imitate those sounds.

My favorite and most practiced method of creating new sounds is through the use of circuit

bending. This practice encourages experimenters to deconstruct electronic devices and test out

various new electrical connections, which were unintended by the original designers of the product,

resulting in surprising new noises that sometimes consist of buzzing, humming, beeping, crackling,

hissing, and many of the sounds identified earlier as being part of the body of glitch noise. Circuit

bending is also relatively simple to learn; one does not need to pay for expensive hardware or

software, read through any instruction manuals, or be savvy in any coding language to be successful

in extracting brilliant sounds from cheap devices. Nicolas Collins stated in his article on “Live

Electronic Music,” “Reed Ghazala started publishing articles on what he dubbed 'Circuit Bending' in

the influential (if quasi-underground) journal, Experimental Music Instruments in 1992. Ghazala incited

readers to transform inexpensive found electronics, such as toys and cheap keyboards, by

connecting wires between various points on the circuit board at random, until one either induced an

interesting new noise or the toy blew up. Circuit bending tries hard to preserve the innocent

enthusiasm of accidental discovery.”45 Part of the reason circuit bending is associated with glitch is

because the final products of circuit bending are the results of accidental discovery–sounds which

were originally unintended, but are revived by the curious and resourceful experimenter. Circuit

bending is a very useful strategy to create glitch noise, where one can exhaust numerous different

sounds from every system, provided one has the patience to experiment with a great deal of

rewiring.

In addition to circuit bending, those seeking to discover the sounds of glitch can also turn to

their computers. By converting, editing, corrupting, or rewriting data from different files, users can

experience a cascade of strange computer noises. Data conversion is the process by which computer

                                                                                                               44 Whitehead, The Intuitionist, as discussed in Cascone, “The Aesthetics of Failure,” 12. 45 Collins, “Live Electronic Music.” 52.

 

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data is transformed from one file type to another, edited, and then read by the computer as an audio

file, resulting in the sonification of pure data. A very simple example of this would be to take a jpeg

file (read .jpeg) and change the last characters of its name to .raw. One could then open up that file

(originally an image) and hear it transformed by the computer into sound using something like

QuickTime player.46 Although the computer can change the file-type, the data within that jpeg file

was not originally intended to be read as audio, so the resulting sounds are quite noisy and highly

suggestive of a computer system error. This method is one of the ways I started looking for glitch

sounds on my computer.

After glitch noise has been created and recorded, artists still have many options for further

transforming those sounds to meet their aesthetic preferences. One of the most interesting and

useful methods composers have of transforming recorded sounds to generate interesting new effects

is through the application of granular synthesis. In 1957, granular synthesis was proposed to be “the

representation of acoustic spectra in terms of very small grains or quanta.”47 It is the process by

which a sound is crushed into very small quantities called grains, which, when played back in rapid

succession, sound extremely altered from their original recorded sound. Generally credited as the

first composer to develop granular synthesis, author of Microsound and Computer Music Journal editor

Curtis Roads “has demonstrated the ability to form mesmerizing ‘clouds’ of sounds from layering

individual grains, which are controlled by the musician in a half random/half deterministic

fashion.”48 Granular synthesis has numerous applications for creating exciting new sounds, and for

incorporating those sounds into real-time performance. Indeed, “The full potential of [granular]

synthesis can only be explored in a full implementation that generates or extracts grains in an

operating environment that allows significant dynamic control over key parameters such as their

individual enveloping and duration, density, and crucially in a re-synthesis context, the ability to vary

the speed of movement through the natural time domain of the sounds selected for granulation.

Whereas the last requirement makes it necessary to work with prerecorded data, the scope and

extent of the live transformations that are possible outweigh the possible drawbacks when working

in a live performance context.”49 As stated here, composers using granular synthesis are able to wield

                                                                                                               46 Sangild, “Glitch”, 259. 47 Manning, Peter. "Sound Synthesis Using Computers." The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music. By R. T. Dean. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 95. Print. 48 Bailey, Micro-Bionic. 98. 49 Ibid., p. 95.

 

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great control over the quality of sounds produced from the grains, by directing their decisions to

manipulating various parameters.

Some artists may wish to build their own devices that produce glitch sounds, which they can

revisit again and again, perhaps learning to treat the device as an instrument itself, or just as a useful

source for generating material. In his book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking,

Nicolas Collins illuminates many ways in which amateur (and professional) electronic artists can

build their own electronic devices and instruments. His chapters lay out valuable information, such

as the tools and materials needed, practical information and general advice on hacking systems,

instructions on how to solder, how to take apart electronics to find different circuits, how to use

oscillators, how to make switches, how to make distortion, and what to know about analog to digital

conversion. The book includes many helpful images, figures, and charts that serve as examples to

those trying to build their own devices. As an active composer and performer of electronic music

himself, Collins’s book is an invaluable source for glitch artists looking to create their own noise

making devices.

Instead of always trying to create glitch sounds from circuit bending various devices or trying

out data conversion on computers, occasionally I might find myself lucky enough to encounter an

interesting sound coming from an analog or digital device that strikes me as ‘glitchy’ and thus,

desirable. In these cases, I might hastily grab a recording device (or mobile device) and try to capture

that sound and store it away for later experimentation. Some of the sounds I might record in this

manner might include a CD skipping, a modem, a fax machine, a light bulb buzzing, white noise on

a TV, radio interference, a sine tone, or even just static. These moments remind me that the sounds

of glitch can be discovered at any time from regular devices we encounter on a daily basis at school,

work, home, or elsewhere.

One of the primary tools used by many computer musicians for audio synthesis,

programming, and incorporating technology into their compositions is through the use of the

computer program Max/MSP. In 1988, IRCAM released the first version of the program, created by

Miller Puckette, designed to “support real-time interaction between the performer and computer

[while providing] a rich array of virtual patches and controllers for the management of audio

processing.”50 Two years later, a musician-friendly version was introduced, making the program

more accessible. This software allows the user great flexibility in the design of the systems they

develop, and has been instrumental in facilitating the exploration of glitch music in live                                                                                                                50 Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music, 221.

 

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performance. The Max environment is very useful for artists who may not have an extensive

background in programming, because the user-interface allows for “intuitive development of real-

time audio manipulation systems.”51 In addition to programming controllers that manage audio

processing, in Max it is very easy to create white noise, sine tones, and the sounds of clipping by

writing very straightforward patches to do so, and mapping triggers of those sounds onto various

control devices. Max/MSP is especially useful for glitch artists as it can create many of the sounds of

glitch music from scratch. Nevertheless, the primary reason I use Max is to integrate all of the

electronics and control devices directly into my instrument.

Max/MSP allows me to create glitch noise, store all of my audio files in one place, access

those files via triggers, and map those triggers onto any control device of my choosing. Once I have

created and recorded an ample amount of glitch noise, I can then import those files and load them

into buffers in Max/MSP. From there, accessing those samples is only a matter of pushing a trigger

(a trigger can be a button, a note on a MIDI-keyboard, a physical gesture that is interpreted by

sensors or a camera, or the trigger can just be a numeric value that is reached through some process,

such as timer that counts down and reaches zero, thus triggering some programmed effect). For my

thesis capstone project, I had been exploring ways to trigger electronic samples while I am seated at

my instrument–one of those ways being by using controllers placed on or near the piano during

performance. One such device I have worked with is the KORG nanoKONTROL2, which uses

eight dials, eight faders, and thirty-five different buttons, providing me with a lot of flexibility for

control. Despite the flexibility of having so many buttons and faders for control, using a separate

controller to trigger electronics forces me either to have at least one free hand during select

moments of a piece of music so that I can reach the controller and activate the trigger, without

messing up whatever it is I am performing at the piano, or to have passages of silence composed

into the piece giving me the opportunity to reach the control device to activate the triggers. Even

during stages as early as the composition process, knowing that I will be using a control device, like

the nanoKONTROL2, requires me to carefully consider where in the performance I will trigger the

electronics, since activating triggers is considerably difficult if both of my hands are occupied at the

keyboard playing busy passages, or improvising. That is why one of the most effective means of

controlling the playback of samples (for my music in particular) is through the use of MIDI

commands triggered by specific pitches or motifs on a keyboard or disklavier. The computer can

read the incoming MIDI notes and trigger the appropriate samples at specific moments during the                                                                                                                51 Doornbusch. "Early Hardware And Early Ideas In Computer Music." 56.

 

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music, while I am still at the keyboard performing. After the music is fully composed and notated, I

make a special MIDI score that the computer can follow, and import it into Max/MSP. Using the

Max/MSP object “follow,” the program reads through the piece on the MIDI score just as I play

along in real-time. This is considerably easier than having to use multiple interfaces to trigger glitch

sounds. This strategy allows me flexibility during the compositional process to eliminate restrictions

on the amount of different glitch samples I intend to explore and trigger during my pieces.

COMPOSING FOR ENSEMBLES AND ELECTRONICS

In this section, I wish to provide a short autobiographical account of some of my musical

influences, which may in some ways illuminate similarities between myself and other young

composers who share stylistic qualities in their music. Additionally, this section examines how I have

assimilated the use of electronics into my practice.

Composers born in the late 80s grew up with diverse bodies of musical influences, and by

the mid to late 90s they had an enormous library of music made available through the accessibility of

the Internet. In the early 2000s, with Google, iTunes, and YouTube, these same young composers

could listen to samples of any piece of music that Internet users were willing to share. Today, with

Spotify, Grooveshark, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and other internet radio and internet library

companies, combined with the mobility of smartphones, laptops, and tablets, there appears to be

seemingly no restrictions on what music this generation may access, or where they choose to do so.

From an early age, my father exposed me to rich, highly influential music, including works

by jazz phenomenon Pat Metheny, as well as music by the legendary Canadian trio Rush. As an

active drummer, pianist, and songwriter himself, my father had been interested in becoming familiar

with new sequencing and recording technologies during the late 80s and early 90s, working with

Atari computers and Triton synthesizers. Although he was primarily focused in the Latin Pop music

scene, he continually exposed himself to popular music of the time in both pop and smooth jazz,

listening to artists including Seal, The Police, Tears for Fears, Lyle Mays, The Rippingtons,

Hiroshima, Wynton Tisdale, Dave Weckl, and others. Inevitably, I digested and internalized ideas of

harmony and rhythm from these artists during my youth, and developed an interest in the

relationship between technology and musical performance from my father's example, tucking away

these concepts until I was older and eager to create my own compositions.

My composition process almost always begins with improvisation at the piano; the early

 

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stages require that through experimentation I search for useable chord progressions, melodic ideas,

or interesting rhythms and meters that satisfy my aesthetic standards. I audition materials for lengthy

stretches of time until I feel those materials are noteworthy, at which point I will memorize or

scribble down the ideas; complete notation happens much later. It is only after I have truly

internalized those musical materials through practice (as a performer), that I feel confident in my

ability to command those musical ideas and direct other performers for whom those materials are

being written.

A combination of my methodology as a composer and my early musical influences has

resulted in my works having recognizable attributes, often due to certain techniques that I’ve

adopted. Some of the techniques I have adopted into many of my compositions include 1) left-hand

piano patterns performed in unison with a bass player 2) repeated notes or repeated chords in the

right-hand of the pianist 3) the use of many odd meters and metric modulations 4) a strict adherence

to a set of principles that guide my harmonic sensibilities 5) establishing a concrete rhythmic outline

that is draped over an entire piece, resulting in most sections of said piece to sound meticulously

stitched to rhythmic patterns 6) a stylistic approach to playing piano that incorporates both the use

of chord voicings in the lower register of the piano, and the use of unusually dense seven, eight, and

even nine note chords, in addition to ornamenting the attack of those chords with uneven

acciaccaturas and grace notes. These techniques were developed in response to certain musical

influences I’ve studied, and in response to my various musical experiences, described below:

1) The use of left-hand piano patterns performed in unison with the bass player is something

that has been practiced in jazz by countless composers, but I first began internalizing this stylistic

choice after spending weeks listening to the music of Hiromi Uehara, especially tracks such as

"XYZ" and "Another Mind" from Another Mind (2003), "Brain" from Brain (2004), and "Spiral" from

Spiral (2006). Uehara was one of the most important and influential young jazz artists experimenting

with rhythm, form, time, instrumentation, and electronics in the past decade. As I recall, most of the

young up-and-coming jazz musicians with whom I'd met at shows or in school between 2006-2008

had admitted to studying Uehara's records. Her music played a significant role in the development of

my own musical aesthetics.

2) The concept of repeated notes or chords is not something I am trying to historically trace

back to its roots, but I would like to comment as to when I began to integrate that stylistic choice

into my works. Although I did not study (or even become aware of) minimalism until I was a

sophomore studying music in college in 2008, I had heard the latest record by the Pat Metheny

 

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Group entitled The Way Up (2005), which drew a lot of influences from the works of Steve Reich.52

This particular album contained a single, hour-long piece of music, that explored repetition, long

form, odd meters, metric modulation, shifting time signatures, different solo sections for each

performer, and the use of sequencers and electronics. I would venture to say that this single piece of

music was the most influential musical recording that I had heard in my life, which has since guided

my aesthetic sensibilities as a composer.

3) Odd meter is something that I have always had a deep interest in exploring, even as early

as my childhood listening to Pat Metheny and Rush. When I started composing seriously in college,

I was listening to records like Time Control (2007), recorded by Hiromi Uehara's group "Hiromi's

Sonicbloom," and Virtue (2009), recorded by the young jazz prodigy Eldar Djangirov, both records

featuring several works that incorporate odd meters. I began to develop fluency in using odd meters,

becoming more comfortable writing in time signatures with numerators like 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and so

forth. Studying in college with masters of complex rhythms, like bassist Mark Dresser, also helped

foster a great love for odd meter within me. Most recently, I learned of and began listening to Nik

Bärtsch's Ronin project, with Rhea (2004), Stoa (2006), Holon (2008), and Llyrìa (2010). My piece A

Drop of Blood in A Bowl of Tears has a section that was very much inspired by Bärtsch's "Modul 35."

4) The principles that guide my harmonic sensibilities have been taught to me by listening

primarily to the artists I have already named above, as well as countless others. I've been especially

influenced by pianists who've incorporated late 19th century and early 20th century composers

(Shubert, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel) into the "impressionistic jazz piano language," emulated best by

luminaries like Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and Brad Mehldau. Much of what I compose is centered on

chord qualities rooted in a tertiary language. My progressions tend to be based on chromatic

movement that emphasizes major and minor contrast, and they rarely, if ever, contain a tonic, yet

they invite the performer to establish hypothetic tonics given which the chord progressions can be

analyzed as derived from scales suggested by the hypothetical tonic. Admittedly, this is an elusive

way of establishing tonality. Nevertheless, my music can be described as being tonal (or by some,

modal, in the sense that my music forces improvisers to treat each chord separately).

5) Having a strong rhythmic foundation in my music is something that I have learned from

many of my favorite artists, and from playing in bands as a leader and a sideman for years. Attending

jam sessions in San Diego, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Hollywood, and LA, reinforced my notions

                                                                                                               52 The opening of “The Way Up” starts with repeated notes on the marimba and guitars, which very nearly quotes the opening of Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” both in rhythm and in harmony.

 

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that the mark of a good rhythm section is having excellent technique and ability to play together,

carefully coordinating rhythmic patterns (among other things). Especially working with the piano

trio, I have focused my rehearsals around getting the group to play together with a solid "groove,"

i.e. synchronizing our inner metronomes, our downbeats, out accents, and even our breathing, so

that as a trio we sound like a solid rhythmic force. Significant albums that showed me the

importance of having a band with a tight rhythmic center are Suspicious Activity? (2005) from The Bad

Plus, You Can Have Your Moment (2010) by Kneebody, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow (2010) by Christian

Scott, and groundUP (2012) by Snarky Puppy.

6) There are a number of stylistic decisions about jazz piano performance that I have

internalized and exhibited in my playing. One technique I have adopted is the extensive use of

ornamentation to playing chords, namely using acciaccaturas, grace notes, and sustain pedal. I most

likely learned this habit from listening to one of the most talked about jazz pianists in recent years,

Robert Glasper. He has been especially recognized for incorporating hip-hop and electronic

elements into his music with the Robert Glasper Experiment, featuring musicians such as Chris

"Daddy" Dave (drums), Derrick Hodge (bass), and Casey Benjamin (woodwinds, vocoder, and

electronics). Aside from Glasper's work with his ensemble, I have learned mostly from his

performance techniques that involve him playing the notes of his chords in a staggered way, almost

rolling his chords so as not to play every note together on a single beat. This characteristic may be

best demonstrated on "Centerlude" from Canvas (2005) and "J Dillalude" from In My Element (2007).

Another technique I've integrated into my playing style is the use of chord voicings in the lower

registers of the piano. This practice has mainly arisen out of my move away from having bassists

play walking bass lines. While the bass player plays ostinato figures, vamps, or unison lines with the

piano, the problem of having the bass player and pianist compete for "real estate" in the lower

register has nearly been eliminated. This type of writing for the bass player allows me as a pianist to

revisit and explore ways of performing in lower registers.

As I have added electronics to my vocabulary of useable materials for composition, some

new concerns must be considered. During the compositional process, I must take into account what

will become the presence of glitch noise into the music. Therefore, while I compose, it is very

important for me to seriously consider how to provide ample space in the music so that both the

performers and the electronic noises have opportunities to be clearly heard. I also must consider the

mechanism by which the glitch noises are triggered (whether by MIDI signal from a disklavier, or

manually by pressing a button on a device like the KORG nanoKONTROL2), and compose music

 

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that offers performers enough time and mental clarity to activate those triggers in a way that

augments the performance experience. The challenge will be to do this in such a way so as to allow

myself the freedom to improvise, and have the computer provide the electronic sounds that I have

predetermined to be appropriate during said improvisatory passages.

While composing for ensembles and glitch, I have found it helpful to categorize my glitch

materials, in order to better differentiate the characteristics of those sounds, better informing a

composer on how s/he might want to incorporate them into a composition. In my works (Embrace,

Fiver’s Dream, Variations on Ryoji Ikeda, Zero Haven), I generally use glitch sounds in one of two ways

1) as a texture, or background, or an entity which functions independent of rhythmic patterns being

performed by the musicians 2) as an electronic percussion instrument (or an enhancement of one

such as the piano/prepared-piano) and rhythmic device, completely dependent upon the rhythms

performed by the musicians. An explanation of how I use glitch sounds in both contexts is provided

below:

The use of lengthy glitch samples in my music requires that I arrange and compose those

samples in advance, making aesthetic decisions governing the arrangement of sounds and space

within that sample. Once the sample is triggered, its reproduction is unaffected by the human

performers, allowing the sample to work independently. If the electronic materials in these samples

appear dependent upon performed rhythms of the musicians, it is just an illusion, composed ahead

of time. These samples can be used to establish a rhythm, which the musicians will hear and then

imitate; or the samples can work against the rhythms and structures of the ensemble, creating

contrast and dissonance. Most of these samples are likely to range from between a few seconds to a

few minutes in total duration. Fig. 1 shows an example where a chord triggers a sample in measure

19, a note triggers another sample in the following measure, and another chord triggers another

sample in measure 23. The glitch materials are acting as a layer of texture beneath the sounds of the

performers.

To use glitch as a percussive element, organized intricately around the actual rhythms of the

performers, and even triggered by those performers, requires the use of much shorter samples. Most

of the clips I use in this manner are between 25 and 500 milliseconds in total duration. The goal

effect is the reproduction of a very brief noise. That noise can then be mapped to notes and phrases

on the keyboard; the lifespan of those noises lasting about as long as or shorter than the lifespan of a

struck note on the piano (without the use of the sustain pedal). I am interested in using these short

samples to accentuate the rhythms performed by the group, which requires that those samples

 

     25

function in a way completely dependent on the patterns played by the pianist. In Fig. 2, one can see

the relationship between the glitch noise labeled on the bottom of the staff, and the rhythms of the

right-hand of the piano. Everything here is synchronized. The sounds of glitch are experienced

simultaneously with the sounds of the piano.

Fig. 1 (above): The chord played by the right hand of the piano in measure 19 triggers a short sample of glitch noise to start. The sample plays four beats at a fixed tempo. In the following measure, the low F# played in the left hand triggers a loop of white noise and CD skipping to be repeated ad infinitum, while gradually getting louder. In measure 23, the chord played in the right hand of the piano triggers the loop to end, and a new sample of glitch noise to play (again, four beats at a fixed tempo).

Upon comparing my own recent compositions, those that contain glitch and those that do

not, I observed few significant differences other than of the obvious use of electronics, and the

addition of more overall space in the piece (for the electronics to fill). This may be because the glitch

sounds are an element that behaves just like an instrument. One could think of today’s glitch artists

working on their laptops and devices, as working on their instruments. Indeed, the sounds of glitch

can even be though of as embodied by speakers, monitors, PA systems, audio networks, and the

computers connecting everything together, further cementing the idea that the presence of glitch is

akin to the presence of another instrument.

 

     26

Fig. 2 (above): Between measures 32 and 35, one note on the keyboard (E4) triggers a short 50-millisecond sample of glitch noise. As this note gets repeated through all four measures, the glitch also gets repeated. Observe how the rhythms of the right hand of the piano align perfectly with the rhythms assigned for the glitches.

If the glitch materials are thought of as another instrument, then it is reasonable to conclude

that a composer who predominantly writes for acoustic instruments, and begins to incorporate glitch

electronics into his/her practice, will likely continue to compose following the same principles and

guidelines which s/he has been using all along. The addition of more instruments to an ensemble

does not always require that the composer make significant changes to the composition of a piece.

For example, adding cello to a piece of music means I may write a soloistic passage for that

instrument, contrapuntal lines, background figures, new interweaving melodies and harmonies,

and/or unison or doubling parts. Adding cello to a piece of music does not necessarily mean I will

reshape the formal design of the music, discard my aesthetic sensibilities for using harmony and

rhythm, alter the way I improvise, or change the way my performers interact. Similarly, the

incorporation of electronics into the acoustic ensemble doesn’t always require significant changes to

the composition of a piece either. For me, the glitch is now just another line on the staff, below

piano, upright bass, and drum-set. It can be an important line, but it is still just a line. I do not give

special weight to the electronics; the parts I compose for each instrument (including the electronic

 

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materials) are equally important in my view. Within my music, I am looking at technology as a tool to

allow musicians to alter and transform the sounds of their instruments by blending the sounds they

produce with a layer of glitch electronics. Because I use the glitch as another sound source in my

music, adding glitch electronics to the ensemble has not fundamentally changed the way I compose

or improvise (which has facilitated my transition from composing for acoustic ensembles to

composing for electro-acoustic ensembles).

At this point, it is appropriate to bring up and question the idea of performers referencing

glitch through their physical and musical actions. If my music is incorporating the sounds of glitch

into the ensemble, why not have performers themselves try to suggest glitch-like noises? Since the

instrumental training of many musicians is centered around good technique and the avoidance of

noisy, accidental sounds, it would make sense to incorporate those accidental and noisy ‘mistake-

like’ effects into my music as a method to further incorporate the idea of glitch into my work. Here I

must clarify that I am especially interested in the sounds of digital and analog technologies. I am not

particularly curious about the expansive idea of accidents and mistakes, and its countless ways of

being manifested. That would be exhausting, and probably difficult to condense into a useable or

logical range of performance ideas for a thesis recital. I am not looking to have my performers break

their expensive instruments in order to find interesting new sounds (not that they would need to

completely break their instruments to find those sounds), nor am I asking them to deliberately make

mistakes during my MFA thesis concert. Instead, I am looking to have trained human musicians do

what I feel they do best: to sound like trained human musicians. I’ll leave it to the computer to

sound like a computer. In other words, I’ll leave it to the computer to generate the sounds of glitch.

As it turns out, the manner in which I am incorporating glitch electronics into my music

deals very little with the notion of failure (as it would pertain to musical performance). Granted, it

might suggest error to an audience wondering if those beeps and hisses coming from the PA system

are intended or not as part of my compositions. But the fact of the matter is that those sounds are

not accidents as I use them. As a composer, I have taken the time to carefully create these glitch

noises through various processes, and I have meticulously decided precisely how they should

enhance my works. Admittedly, my process of searching for useful glitch sounds is strikingly similar

to my process of improvising at the piano during the process of composition as I search for useable

musical materials. The noisy computer sounds that end up in my works are the result of

improvisation with technology, and not necessarily the result of error (although they may sound

erroneous). I make decisions about what to incorporate and what to discard. I imagine the form of a

 

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work, its duration, its mood, and I imagine which of the materials that I have developed would be

best to use at specific points. I am not presenting glitches as errors in my pieces. They have become

transformed into musical materials, just as an improviser transforms his ideas (and occasional

mistakes) into music. When someone asks me, “What is glitch?” I can answer that question, but the

answer will not likely fully explain my music or its aesthetics. I am an improviser and composer who

is expanding his list of usable materials to include the sounds of digital technology, and glitch.

GLITCH + JAZZ

The use of the word jazz is one that is familiar to me. The majority of my study in music has

been in the field of jazz; a significant amount of my instructors were and are reputable jazz artists.

My understanding of harmony first came from transcribing the works (and the language) of jazz

musicians. The compositions presented in this paper tend to focus both on a dynamic relationship

within small groups, and also on improvisation, and the artistry of the individuals. Because it is well

beyond the scope of this paper to present a definition of jazz, this document will attempt to do no

such thing. Rather, I intend to position myself in such a way so as to be understood as a disciple of

jazz. I have the utmost respect for the jazz tradition, and hope to be recognized someday as being

part of that ever-transforming lineage. Among the artists who have influenced my recent works are

Christian Scott, Vijay Iyer, Snarky Puppy, Kneebody, Hiromi Uehara, The Bad Plus, Esbjörn

Svensson, Bugge Wesseltoft, and Vardan Ovsepian. These artists have continued to create music

that has sometimes challenged conservative opinions regarding what it means to play jazz. I am

interested in emulating these artists, following the lessons they have taught me, and discovering ways

of further experimenting with the jazz tradition by incorporating electronics into the music.

There has been a long history of experimentation in jazz with electronic instruments. Miles

Davis famously explored the potential of integrating electronics into the ensemble as far back as

Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), In A Silent Way (1969), and Bitches Brew (1970). Today, there is no shortage

of jazz artists who have married electronics and found exciting ways of bringing them into the band.

Robert Glasper comes to mind, mentioned earlier as the internationally famous jazz pianist and

producer, and he has continued this same interest in combining jazz with more electronic elements;

and so have his contemporaries Matthew Shipp, Mark Guiliana, Adam Benjamin, Marco Benevento,

and many others. However, one of my primary interests is in identifying jazz artists who have

explored the integration of computers into their work. For this current research, the utility of

 

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electronic instruments (electric guitars, keyboards, etc.) by these artist’s and their bands is not

enough to identify them as useful models for combining glitch and jazz. It is imperative to study

models that have embraced computers and the sounds of glitch. Which improvisers are looking

more closely for the sounds of glitch?

Bugge Wesseltoft is one of the world’s best-known jazz artists working with live electronics

and computers. He is an accomplished jazz pianist and successful producer. Anne Estoppey writes

in his biography,

“Jazz goes clubbing The beginning of the 90s was also the time when jazz musicians started to play spontaneously in clubs with DJs, after their regular gigs. It was a two-way street, allowing DJs to contribute to the sound like traditional musicians, and allowing Jazz musicians to communicate with an audience that had not previously been their primary target. Jazz meeting house and techno beats resulted in an energetic groove, perfect for the club crowd to respond to. The music is built up on the spot, as an improvising collective, with a pulsating beat as guideline, coming out of the hands of skilled DJs and their turntables. Bugge's next project was heavily influenced by these elements. 1994: A New Conception of Jazz Within the framework of his project New Conception of Jazz, Bugge successfully fused elements of jazz, house, techno, ambient, noise and free improvisation. This sound has been referred to as Future Jazz. In addition to grand piano and Fender Rhodes, Bugge uses different keyboards, percussion instruments, samplers, programming devices, and vocal effects, both in live performances and in studio recordings.”53

Working towards the fusion of jazz, techno, house, ambient, and noise is certainly a step in

the right direction towards a goal of glitch jazz, and Wesseltoft is perhaps the best example we have

today of a renowned jazz artist incorporating the computer (and the elements of EDM) into his

practice. Wesseltoft uses a laptop, controllers, mics and a mixer, all setup on a table close to a piano,

where he can move back and forth between playing piano and adjusting the controls on the

computer.54 Some of the electronic materials he uses are primarily loop-based, allowing him to

endlessly improvise on top of that layer from the piano. Yet, there are more efficient models of

computer-integrated performance that seem more suited to the pianist/electronic artist.

My own strategy of integrating control of the electronics directly into the instrument has

already been outlined previously, and does not need repeating here. It is my contention that this

method of triggering electronics in the context of a jazz combo is very efficient, and deserves greater

attention from both artists and scholars. My research demonstrates useful ways of controlling

electronics via the keyboard using Max/MSP–this particular technique has been documented much

more extensively in the field of computer music than it has in the field of jazz and improvisation.

                                                                                                               53 Estoppey, “Bugge Wesseltoft.” 54 “Bugge Wesseltoft Live at Badechief Berlin summer 07.”

 

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Admittedly, artists including George Lewis, Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, and Vijay Iyer, have

experimented with electronics and computers in improvisation. Yet none of their work makes

exclusive use of glitch materials, or makes any attempt to fuse the stylistic elements of glitch music

with those of jazz. The marriage of glitch and jazz is one that seeks to discover ways of integrating

glitch noise into the well-established tradition of the piano trio. My music attempts to dismantle and

combine ideas from glitch and from jazz, blurring the boundary of established genres.

Because I am interested in performing as both a pianist and as an electronic musician, I have

focused my studies on integrating the computer (or controls) into the piano. But had I not been a

pianist, it is very likely that I would have happily focused on the laptop as my instrument, still

searching for ways to unite electronic and acoustic music further. In fact, most glitch artists today

continue to perform on laptops and other control surfaces (nanoKONTROL2, LEMUR, etc.). It is

unclear to me to what extent those artists are improvising live, in other words making spontaneous

decisions about rhythm, timbre, volume, arrangement of materials, silence, quality of sounds,

characteristics of noise, and other variables that constitute the makeup of their glitch music. It is not

difficult to imagine a similar type of artist, perhaps even a glitch improviser, who works behind a laptop

or similar control device, and who performs with an acoustic ensemble, and improvises with them.

Many of the current problems that my research with the disklavier and Max/MSP has encountered

would likely not be issues with the glitch improviser scenario (i.e. the computer becoming confused

during improvisation, and skipping ahead in a composition). Admittedly, it is probably easier to

teach a human improviser the details of a musical work than it is to teach a computer those same

details. One may even find that the human is a better improviser than the computer. It is my belief

that we will start to see more laptop musicians collaborating with acoustic ensembles, and especially

(hopefully) with jazz artists, paving the way for the arrival of the glitch improviser, and perhaps

glitch jazz.

It is out of love of the jazz tradition that this author wishes to push that tradition forward,

inviting the integration of electronics further and further with jazz. Especially with computers, and

the aesthetics behind glitch music, there is an opportunity right now for jazz musicians to borrow

elements of that genre, and find meaningful ways of synthesizing the two art forms together. It

seems that nearly every decade, some jazz musicians can be seen experimenting with brand new

forms of usability and (often controversially) expanding the definitions of what jazz means.

Improvisers explore new forms as the tradition evolves, and audiences find ways of making the

music personally relevant to the times. In 2013, digital technologies (and the faults that come with

 

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them) have permeated nearly every facet of society. I encounter glitches now in smart phones, iPods,

tablets, computer games, GPS devices, TV screens, game consuls, webpages, musical equipment,

and even in the DVDs I own that examine jazz icons today. As a music lover myself, and devotee of

the tradition, I am eagerly waiting for more jazz artists to explore glitch within their compositions,

establishing a musical narrative that includes these elements that are now part of everyday life.

Within my own compositions, I want to portray the struggle of the individual trying to proclaim his

worth as a human in a world that is becoming dominated by digital technologies, and I believe the

juxtaposition of the piano trio with glitch noise captures that idea very well. As pianist and scholar

Vijay Iyer has attested, “If we define it provisionally as real-time decisions and actions, then what

isn’t improvisation? We’re improvising from the moment we acquire sensation and motion…Life

begins at improvisation. Life is a sustained improvisational interaction with the structures of the

world, of the body, of culture.”55 We are all improvising together, and we are all improvising with

and around digital technologies; we regularly improvise with glitches (most often by ignoring them,

or by trying to eliminate them). The glitch reminds us that our digital world will continue to surprise

us in ways we had not anticipated. We are forced to improvise and come up with solutions when our

digital technologies glitch and behave in unexpected ways. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it

anyway: we are all improvisers negotiating control in a digital world.

                                                                                                               55 Iyer, “Improvisation,” 171.

 

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